I started using IBM & compatible PCs back in the mid 1980s, with whatever version or flavour of DOS was to be found on a 5.25" floppy. Oh the luxury of having 2 floppy drives! The really fortunate had internal hard drives with as much as 10MB of storage! Like PDR1, my first experience of Windows was monochrome, I can't remember what version, but I do remember Windows 3.0 in full colour, running on DOS 4 (or 5, it's a bit hazy). By the time that Windows 3.1 came out and was actually pretty usable, DOS was definitely at 5.0. Windows 3.11 for Workgroups on DOS 6.2 was my first MS Certification - I have a 4-digit MCP number, which no-one believes is genuine! It was challenging to get all the drivers you needed loaded into high memory in those days, it's far too simple now.
BSODs were the norm, not the exception.
SD